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THE minister, when
verging on four-score, became blind. A son of the manse, his youngest,
was, to his joy, appointed to be his assistant and successor in the
ministry. I cannot forget the last occasion on which "the old man
eloquent appeared in the pulpit. The Holy Communion was about to
be dispensed, and, before parting for ever from his flock, he wished to
address them once more. When he entered the pulpit, he mistook the side
for the front; but old Rory, who watched him with intense interest, was
immediately near him, and seizing a trembling hand, placed it on the
book-board, thus guiding his master into the right position for
addressing the congregation. And then stood up that venerable man, a
Saul in height among the people, with his pure white hair falling back
from his ample forehead over his shoulders. Few, and loving, and
earnest, were the words he spoke, amidst the profound silence of a
passionately-devoted people, which was broken only by their low sobs,
when he told them that they should see his face no more. Soon afterwards
he died. The night of his death, sons and daughter.; were grouped around
his bed, his wife on one side, old Rory on the other. His mind had been
wandering during the day. At evening he sat up in bed; and one of his
daughters, who supported his head, dropped a tear on his face. Rory
rebuked her and wiped it off; for it is a Highland superstition (?),
that no tear should ever drop on the face of a good man dying;—is it
because it adds to the burden of dying, or is unworthy of the glorious
hopes of living? Suddenly the minister stretched forth his hand, as if a
child was before him, and said, "I baptize thee into the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," then falling back, he expired. It
seemed as if it were his own baptism as a child of glory.
The widow did not long
survive her husband. She had, with the quiet strength and wisdom of
love, nobly fulfilled her part as wife and mother. And who can know what
service a wife and mother is to a family, save those who have had this
staff to lean on, this pillow to rest on, this sun to shine on them,
this best of friends, to accompany them, until their earthly journey is
over, or far advanced? Her last years were spent in peace in the old
manse, occupied then and now by her youngest son. But she desired, ere
she died, to see her first-born in his Lowland manse far away, and with
him and his children to connect the present with the past. She
accomplished her wishes, and left an impress on the young of the third
generation which they have never lost during the thirty years that have
passed since they saw her face and heard her voice. Illness she had
hardly ever known. One morning a grandchild gently opened her bedroom
door with breakfast. But hearing the low accents of prayer, she quietly
closed it again, and retired. When she came again, and tapped and
entered, all was still. The good woman seemed asleep in peace; and so
she was, but it was the sleep of death. She was buried in the Highland
churchyard, beside her husband and nine of her children. There, with
sweet young ones, of another generation, who have since then joined them
from the same manse, they rest until the resurrection morning, when all
will meet "in their several generations."
Old Rory, however, first
followed his beloved master. One evening, after weeks of illness, he
said to his wife, "Dress me in my best; get a cart ready; I must go to
the manse and bless them all, and then die." His wife thought at first
that his strange and sudden wish was the effect of delirium, and she was
unwilling to consent. But Rory gave the command in a tone which was
never heard except when, at sea or on land, he meant to be obeyed.
Arrayed in his Sunday's best, the old man, feeble, pale, and breathless,
tottered into the parlour of the manse, where the family were soon
around him, wondering, as if they had seen a ghost, what had brought him
there. "I bless you all, my dear ones," he said, "before I die." And,
stretching out his hands, he pronounced a patriarchal blessing, and a
short prayer for their welfare. Shaking, hands with each, and kissing
the hand of his old and dear mistress, he departed. The family group
felt awe-struck,—the whole scene was so sudden, strange, and solemn.
Next day, Rory was dead.
Old Jenny, the henwife,
rapidly followed Rory. Why mention her? Who but the geese or the turkeys
could miss her? But there are, I doubt not, many of my readers who can
fully appreciate the loss of an old servant who, like Jenny, for half a
century has been a respected and valued member of the family, She was
associated with the whole household life of the manse. Neither she nor
any of those old domestics had ever been mere things, but living persons
with hearts and heads, to whom every burden, every joy of the family was
known. Not a child but had been received into her embrace on the day of
birth; not one passed away but had received her tears on the day of
death; and they had all been decked by her in their last as in their
first garments. The official position she occupied as hen-wife had been
created for her in order chiefly to relieve her feelings at the thought
of her being useless and a burden in her old age. When she died, it was
discovered that the affectionate old creature had worn next her heart,
and in order to be buried with her, locks of hair cut off in infancy
from the children whom she had nursed. And here I must relate a pleasing
incident connected with her. Twenty years after her death, the younger
son of the manse, and its present possessor, was deputed by his church
to visit, along with two of his brethren, the Presbyterian congregations
of North America. When on the borders of Lake Simcoe he was sent for by
an old Highland woman, who could speak her own language only, though she
had left her native hills very many years before. On his entering her
log-hut, the old woman burst into a flood of tears and, without uttering
a word, pointed to a silver brooch which clasped the tartan shawl on her
bosom. She was Jenny's youngest sister, and the silver brooch she wore,
and which was immediately recognised by the minister, had been presented
to Jenny by the eldest son of the manse, when at college, as a token of
affection for his old nurse.
Nearly forty years after
the old minister had passed away, and so many of "the old familiar
faces" had followed him, the manse boat, which in shape and rig was
literally descended from the famous "Roe," lay becalmed, on a beautiful
summer evening, opposite the shore of the glebe. The many gorgeous tints
from the setting sun were reflected from the bosom of the calm sea.
Vessels, "like painted ships upon a painted ocean," lay scattered along
"the Sound," and floated double, ship and shadow. The hills on both
sides rose pure and clear into the blue sky, revealing every rock and
precipice, with heathery knoll or grassy alp. Fish sometimes broke the
smooth unrippled sea, "as of old the Curlews called." The boating party
had gone out to enjoy the perfect repose of the evening, and allowed the
boat to float with the tide. The conversation happened to turn on the
manse and parish.
"I was blamed the other
day," remarked the minister, who was one of the party, "for taking so
much trouble in improving my glebe, and especially in beautifying it
with trees and flowers, because, as my cautious friend remarked, I
should remember that I was only a life-renter. But I asked my adviser
how many proprietors in the parish—whose families are supposed to have a
better security for their lands than the minister has for the glebe—have
yet possessed their properties so long as our poor family has possessed
the glebe? He was astonished, on consideration, to discover that every
property in the parish had changed its owner, and some of them several
times, since I had succeeded my father."
"And if we look back to
the time since our father became minister," remarked another of the
party, "the changes have been still more frequent. The only possessors
of their first home, in short, in the whole parish, are the family which
had no possessions in it."
"And look," another said,
"at those who are in this boat. How many birds are here out of the old
nest!" And strange enough there were in the boat the eldest and youngest
sons of the old minister, both born on the glebe, and both doctors of
divinity; with three of their sons, likewise clergymen, sitting beside
them, in all five ministers descended from the old minister. The crew
was made up of an elderly man, the son of "old Rory" and of a
white-haired man, the son of "old Archy," both born on the glebe. And
these clergymen represented a few only of the descendants of the old
minister who were enjoying the manifold blessings of life. These facts
are mentioned here in order to connect such mercies with the anxiety
expressed sixty years ago by the poor parson himself in the letter to
his girls, which I have quoted.
One event more remains
for me to record connected with the old manse, and then the silence of
the hills, in which that lowly home reposes, will no more be broken by
any word of mine about its inhabitants—except as they are necessarily
associated with other "reminiscences." It is narrated in the Memoir of
Professor Wilson, that when the eldest son of our manse came to Glasgow
College, in the heyday of his youth, he was the only one who could
compete, in athletic exercises, with Christopher North, who was his
friend and fellow-student. The physical strength, acquired in his early
days by the manly training of the sea and hills, sustained his body;
while a spiritual strength, more noble still, sustained his soul, during
a ministry, in three 'Large and difficult parishes, which lasted, with
constant labour, for more than half a century, and until he was just
about to enter on his eightieth year—the day of his funeral being the
anniversary of his birth. He had married in early life the daughter of
one of the most honourable of the earth, who had for upwards of forty
years, with punctilious integrity, managed the estates of the Argyle
family in the Western Highlands. Her father's house was opposite the old
manse, and separated from it by the "Sound." This invested that inland
sea which divided the two lovers, with a poetry that made "The Roe" and
her perilous voyages a happy vision that accompanied the minister until
his last hour. For three or four years he had retired from public life,
to rest from his labours, and in God's mercy to cultivate the passive
more than the active virtues in the bosom of his own family. But when
disposed to sink into the silent pensiveness and the physical depression
which often attend old age, one topic, next to the highest of all, never
failed to rouse him—even as the dying eagle in its cage, when it sees
far off the mountains on which it tried its early flight—and that one
was converse about the old parish, about his father, and his youth. And
thus it happened that on the very last evening of his life he was
peculiarly cheerful, as he told some stories of that long past; and
among others a characteristic anecdote of old Rory. How naturally did
the prayer of thanksgiving then succeed the memories of those times of
peace and early happiness!
That night, his first and
last love—the "better half," verily, of his earthly life, was awakened
from her anxious slumbers near him, by his complaint of pain. But she
had no time to rouse the household ere he, putting his arms round her
neck, and breathing the words "My darling" in her ear, fell asleep. He
had for more than twenty-five years ministered to an immense
congregation of Highlanders in Glasgow; and his public funeral was
remarkable, not chiefly for the numbers who attended it, or the crowds
which followed it—for these things are common in such ceremonies—but for
the sympathy and sorrow manifested by the feeble and tottering Highland
men and women, very many of whom were from the old parish, and who,
bathed in tears, struggled to keep up with the hearse, in order to be
near, until the last possible moment, one for whom they had an
enthusiastic attachment. The Highland hills and their people were to him
a passion, and for their good he had devoted all the energies of his
long life; and not in vain! His name will not, I think, be lost in this
generation, wherever, at least, the Celtic language is spoken; and
though this notice of him may have no interest to the Southern reader,
who may not know, nor care to know, his name, yet every Gael in the most
distant colony, who reads these lines, will pardon me for writing them.
He belongs to them as they did to him. |
